登陆注册
19098000000031

第31章 (4)

[NOTE by Engels to 1885 German edition: This was perfectly correct for the year 1847 [when Marx wrote these lines]. At that time the world trade of the United State was limited mainly to import of immigrants and industrial products, and export of cotton and tobacco, i.e., of the products of southern slave labor. The Northern States produced mainly corn and meat for the slave states. It was only when the North produced corn and meat for export and also became an industrial country, and when the American cotton monopoly had to face powerful competition, in India, Egypt, Brazil, etc., that the abolition of slavery became possible. And even then this led to the ruin of the South, which did not succeed in replacing the open Negro slavery by the disguised slavery is Indian and Chinese coolies. ]

Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.

What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side of this economic category, eliminate the bad.

Hegel has no problems to formulate. He has only dialectics. M.

Proudhon has nothing of Hegel's dialectics but the language. for him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad.

Let us for a moment consider M. Proudhon himself as a category.

Let us examine his good and bad side, his advantages and his drawbacks.

If he has the advantage over Hegel of setting problems which he reserves the right of solving for the greater good of humanity, he has the drawback of being stricken with sterility when it is a question of engendering a new category by dialectical birth-throes. What constitutes dialectical movement is the coexistence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category. The very setting of the problem of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dialectic movement.

It is not the category which is posed and opposed to itself, by its contradictory nature, it is M. Proudhon who gets excited, perplexed and frets and fumes between the two sides of the category.

Caught thus in a blind alley, from which it is difficult to escape by legal means, M. Proudhon takes a real flying leap which transports him at one bound into a new category. Then it is that, to his astonished gaze, is revealed the serial relation in the understanding .

He takes the first category that comes handy and attributes to it arbitrarily the quality of supplying a remedy for the drawbacks of the category to be purified. Thus, if we are to believe M. Proudhon, taxes remedy the drawbacks of monopoly; the balance of trade, the drawbacks of taxes; landed property, the drawbacks of credit.

By taking the economic categories thus successively, one by one, and making one the antidote to the other, M. Proudhon manages to make with this mixture of contradictions and antidotes to contradictions, two volumes of contradictions, which he rightly entitles: The System of Economic Contradictions .

Fifth Observation "In the absolute reason all these ideas... are equally simple, and general.... In fact, we attain knowledge only by a sort of scaffolding of our ideas. But truth in itself is independent of these dialectical symbols and freed from the combinations of our minds."(Proudhon, Vol.II, p.97)

Here all of a sudden, by a kind of switch-over of which we now know the secret, the metaphysics of political economy has become an illusion! Never has M. Proudhon spoken more truly. Indeed, from the moment the process of the dialectic movement is reduced to the simple process of opposing good to bad, and of administering one category as an antidote to another, the categories are deprived of all spontaneity; the idea "ceases to function";there is no life left in it. It is no longer posed or decomposed into categories.

The sequence of categories has become a sort of scaffolding. Dialectics has ceased to be the movement of absolute reason. There is no longer any dialectics but only, at the most, absolutely pure morality.

When M. Proudhon spoke of the series in the understanding, of the logical sequence of categories, he declared positively that he did not want to give history according to the order in time, that is, in M.

Proudhon's view, the historical sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves. Thus for him everything happened in the pure ether of reason.

Everything was to be derived from this ether by means of dialectics. Now that he has to put this dialectics into practice, his reason is in default.

M. Proudhon's dialectics runs counter to Hegel's dialectics, and now we have M. Proudhon reduced to saying that the order in which he gives the economic categories is no longer the order in which they engender on e another. Economic evolutions are no longer the evolutions of reason itself.

What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history, which is, according to M. Proudhon's understanding, the sequence in which the categories have manifested themselves in order of time? No! History as it take place in the idea itself? Still less! That is, neither the profane history of categories, nor their sacred history! What history does he give us then? The history of his own contradictions. Let us see how they go, and how they drag M.

Proudhon in their train.

Before entering upon this examination, which gives rise to the sixth important observation, we have yet another, less important observation to make.

Let us admit with M. Proudhon that real history, history according to the order in time, is the historical sequence in which ideas, categories and principles have manifested themselves.

Each principle has had its own century in which to manifest itself.

同类推荐
  • 二京赋

    二京赋

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 千金裘

    千金裘

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 西子湖拾翠余谈

    西子湖拾翠余谈

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • The Crisis Papers

    The Crisis Papers

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 重令

    重令

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 进化长生

    进化长生

    一片黑暗的虚空中,只有繁星点点,一个透明的牢笼突兀的出现在了这个虚空,只有一个人类在里面苦苦挣扎。一个蔚蓝的星球,火光与黑暗并存,末世在这里上演,新生在这里进化。还有一个坚毅的人在探索着那牢笼之秘,末世之秘,进化之秘。强者之路,进化之路,长生之路在这里上演!!!
  • 最强医生

    最强医生

    “什么?美女你不孕不育?没事,包在我身上,一个晚上就替你治好。”“你问我怎么治?来,耳朵凑过来我告诉你,嘿嘿嘿……”无赖军医重回都市,在一所中学做起了校医,从此美女老师,清纯校花,源源不断……当最后拨开层层迷雾时,他居然发现……
  • 格挡里传奇

    格挡里传奇

    单位里如鱼得水剩女周娜,特别羡慕不惑之年杨潇。面对同事宋烨的斗嘴,越是让周娜对自己的择偶观,坚信不疑的一一否定。
  • 疯癫

    疯癫

    胡冰心的孪生妹妹杨子楠在某个深秋的夜晚,独自驾车在七夕街上时发生了车祸。醒来后,不仅失去了记忆,而且变得如惊弓之鸟般弱不禁风,在她调查车祸原因的过程中。胡冰心打听到了一件关于七夕街的骇人事件——常常有人在深夜遇见一位身穿红裙、怀抱白狗的女子。她总是冷不防地出现在树下,又悄无声息地消失不见,如鬼魅般来去无踪。失忆后,杨子楠的家里发生了一连串诡异的事情——原本关严实的窗户会在半夜莫名其妙地洞开;无人使用的电脑会自己启动,一朵艳丽的红玫瑰赫然跳跃到屏幕上;深夜的窗外似乎总有一双眼睛窥视着房内的一举一动……
  • 将军的专属王爷

    将军的专属王爷

    他是集万千宠爱于一身的大国宝——他是年少有为的护国将军。当诱受恋上渣攻会擦出怎样的火花?————————————他堂堂一国国宝竟然喜欢上了一个男人。靳诺颜单手托腮无奈的琢磨着。而且对方还是那护国将军。百姓都知晓那将军一表人才为人正直,人家心里装的是位娇滴滴的阮家千金!当他彻底伤了他的心掐碎了他的念头,当他已决定随邻国皇帝去苏州玩乐,他又为何死死抓着他的衣袖不放?看诱受王爷与渣攻将军间的一段虐恋。——————————————本文偏向虐恋,情节略轻松。不喜勿
  • 快乐生活有绝招

    快乐生活有绝招

    本书内容丰富详尽,新颖实用,贴近生活,语言通俗易懂,查阅方便,内容包括食品选购、加工烹饪、贮存保鲜、饮食禁忌、衣装选购、洗涤保养等。
  • 新与旧·长河(沈从文小说全集)

    新与旧·长河(沈从文小说全集)

    该卷本收录《新与旧》《主妇集》《长河》三个子集。《新与旧》是沈从文的中篇小说集,1936年由上海良友图书印刷公司首次出版,体现了在那个神秘血腥的湘西世界里,新时代的变迁,旧时代的烙印,通过一个沉重的故事展现一个新旧交错的纷纭时代。
  • 西荒记

    西荒记

    七煞为搅乱世界之贼破军为纵横天下之将贪狼为奸险诡诈之士此三星一旦聚合天下必将易主无可逆转!夜雨手持长枪,以“天下,乃天下人之天下,非一人天下”为从军信念,崛起于神秘的西荒村,带领村民冲破樊笼。为了自己的坚持,为了寻找西荒的往日荣光,一次又一次的征战沙场,建立属于自己的王国。
  • 闪婚诱人

    闪婚诱人

    苏青大四,没领毕业证,先领了结婚证。苏爸爸说:“秦家虽然有钱,但是两老文化素养都不行。我们家虽然穷一些,好歹是书香门第。所以青青你千万不要觉得低人一等,在秦槐面前更加要挺起腰板做人,知道么?”苏青想,其实秦家文化素养也不差,至少秦槐的名字都比她苏青有情怀。至于挺起腰板,她挺再直上头还压着秦家的房秦家的地秦家的过亿资产呢,她这是要挺挺直去争家产?(本文纯属虚构,请勿模仿。)
  • EXO之天使翅膀

    EXO之天使翅膀

    传说中美丽的天使,折翼坠落到了人间,为的是寻找命中注定的殿下。八个带着天使翅膀的天使,路过了人间......少年被一群大汉围在一起,他们用脚踢着少年,少年的命危在旦夕。泪天使带着翅膀,缓缓走向欲血中的少年,心突然好痛好痛......她的痛源于少年......